Thursday, June 18, 2009

CHANGE

It's my birthday! I am 49. Phewwws!! Never imagine I'll be doing this at 49 [read: writing up a blog, sharing my personal experiences and opinions on the world wide web. hehehe! the most hit I got was when I posted some lyrics of English songs or some Erma Bombeck's poems].

I was reading Demi Negara on Satu Sekolah Untuk Semua [one school for all]. Being a teacher for the past twenty seven years I am very interested in the resolution. From my own sporadic postings here, I have penned my observations about the widening segregation among the various ethnics that made up this blessed land 'rakyat' [people].

Before independent, the British who ruled this country applied the rule and divide policy. The local Malays were kept in their traditional villages tending to their traditional lives of planting rice and catching fish. The chinese were brought in from mainland China to work the mines [tin, gold, iron] and the indians were brought in from mainland India to work in the rubber plantations. The mines and the plantations were the British colonialist's economic resources.

Under the colonialists, towns were developed where there were concentration of the British. Thus towns like Kuala Lumpur, Georgetown and Ipoh became bigger and better [with electricity and piped water] and developed faster [office buildings, business, transportation, hospitals, schools and other amenities]. The chinese and the indians were the major people living in towns in 'dwellings' provided by the colonialist 'Tuans' [employers] whereas the Malays stay in their own attap houses in their kampongs [villages] far from the modernisation and development and the infrastructure.

By the time of the independence, there was a wide economic disparity between the Malays in the 'kampongs' and the non Malays in the towns. When the colonialists left, the Chinese established themselves in the main towns and took over the country's economy. Many Indians who served their English masters were able to speak and write English and thus find themselves in a good job market in the towns leaving their illeterate counterparts in the estates. The Malays were left illiterate in their 'pelita' [kerosene lamp] lit, hand-drawn-water-from-the-well kampongs plowing the padi fields with the help of water buffaloes and going to catch fish in small hand made boats.

During the reign of the colonialist, the chinese and the indians were allowed to have vernacular primary schools for the reason that they would eventually RETURN to their mainlands. They wanted to have their children educated in their curriculum and taught by teachers from the mainland.

After independence they still want to keep the vernacular schools.

Vernacular schools institutionalised racism at a very young impressionable age of our children. Racial distinction is further compounded by media programming and commercial adverts through petty racial profiling and prejudices.

2008 general election uncover this so called 'melting pot of races and religion' which is actually a 'boiling couldron of intolerant racists and zealots'.After 52 years of independence, a large number of the citizens are functional-illiterates in the language of this country they claim citizenship of and conveniently ignore the efforts of nation building and social integration expected of citizens of any nation in this world with just a phrase of "tak tau cakap Melayu" [can't speak Malay]. It is very sad to note the the whole world is looking up at Obama for making the American Dream when in the same breath "24+7 percent of the populace hold our beloved nation hostage to debilitating social fragmentation in perpetuity" (Demi Negara).

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*****I slept and dreamt thatlife is joyI woke and sawlife is dutyI acted and beholdduty is joy

- Rabindranath Tagore

*****

I asked for Strength…And God gave me DifficultiesI asked for Wisdom…And God gave me ProblemsI asked for Prosperity…And God gave me Brain and BrawnI asked for Courage…And God gave me DangerI asked for Love…And God gave me Troubled peopleI asked for Favours…And God gave me Opportunities

I received nothing.I received everything.

- Author unknown

If – Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you;If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;If you can meet with triumph and disasterAnd treat those two imposters just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you've spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winningsAnd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breath a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds' worth of distance run -Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!